


I Called Him Kylo

by rythmicjea



Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Sequel Trilogy
Genre: Ben Solo dresses like Han, F/M, Force Sensitivity, Mild Language, Post-Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker, Reylo-esq, Supreme Leader Kylo Ren, Supreme Leaders need support staffs
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-01-11
Updated: 2020-01-11
Packaged: 2021-02-27 10:01:17
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,202
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22215235
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rythmicjea/pseuds/rythmicjea
Summary: “Ben was a fuck… An arrogant prick using his father’s image to escape his own… You called him ‘Ben’... I called him ‘Kylo’.”So this little nugget came to me when listening to Haley Reinhart and PMJ's version of Radiohead's "Creep". What if Kylo Ren had a secretary? You don't get to be the head of an entire government without support staff. You think the Knights of Ren are keeping his calendar? lol okay. It also kind of goes into how he goes from Death Star wreckage to Exagol.
Relationships: Ben Solo & Original Female Character(s), Kylo Ren/Original Female Character(s), Rey/Ben Solo | Kylo Ren
Comments: 1
Kudos: 8





	I Called Him Kylo

I didn’t come by my position out of faith. I didn’t necessarily believe in the cause. Opposing sides never contemplate the driving force of those not in power. It is easy to label all involved with a word or two, lumping them all under the same umbrella. I grew up on a distant moon. We were neglected by the New Republic. Their reach didn’t expand that far and we were forgotten. Our local governments were corrupted on every level. The constables were bought and paid for. Money or blasters was your ticket to status. It was every person for themselves. My parents were farmers as were the many generations before them. If you thought that the service we provided afforded us safety, you would be wrong. It just made is bigger targets. 

Until the First Order came.

They ended the lawlessness, brought order to what was corrupted, and ushered in a safer society. They weren’t perfect but it was a hell of a lot better than what it had been. They recruited those old enough for their ranks. It was a free ticket to see the galaxy. I wanted to help bring order to the chaos to those who needed it. My brother stayed on the farm... maybe I should have too. Training was grueling but I had never felt more alive. The First Order… wasn’t progressive. It was easier to classify people by what they were before what they could do. It made sense at the time. I learned different languages and about new cultures. I saw colors I didn’t think existed and tasted fruit I didn’t think was possible. Our numbers grew exponentially. 

Did I believe in the fascism? No. Did I believe that it was a better way? Yes. Because I didn’t know any better. 

It was in training I learned more… about myself and my family. Our surname in basic means “Orchard of Life”. We could grow anything we wanted. My father would tell me that all I needed to do was ask the land for what it needed and it would give me what I desired. Did you know there were tens of thousands of people on any given ship? To feed everyone would leave a planet desolate. Given my heritage I was assigned to the green levels. My work there didn’t differ from what I was taught as a child. But my production numbers were off the charts. No one could cultivate the system like I could. I knew what was needed and when it was needed at any given time. I thought it was experience and intuition. I was wrong. I am what you call “Force Sensitive”. 

It was how we met. _My snicker echoed_.

_“Rey! Rey!” Finn called out to the new Jedi master. Sweat dripped down his brow, he was out of breath, the concentration over the past hour written clearly on his face. He was exhausted. Finn had never worked so hard with such little results before. All of the others had cracked so easily. Why was this one being so stubborn? Why wouldn’t she just give in?!_

_A young woman strode into the door and took in the sight before her. The prisoner was strapped to a contraption similar to what Ben had at Starkiller Base. The woman was pale and shivering from exhaustion. Her hair matted with sweat against her scalp and her lips were moving softly, whispering something. “What is going on in here?” Rey demanded._

Anyone who had an aptitude for the Force was sent to a separate training program. It was determined that my worth encompassed what I had been doing. I was made an officer because I was “useful”. We all knew who he was and where he came from. It wasn’t like he hid it either. He was lightyears ahead of the rest of us. _I wished I was special_.

_I sniffed, amused_. Ben Solo was just like his father. He had shorter hair at the time, curls twisting around his face. I knew about General Skywalker, Solo and Organa from the Rebel propaganda poster my father had. I would look at it for hours in our attic, using stalks of grain like a lightsaber. Pretending they hadn’t abandoned us… 

What the propaganda tells you, but you refuse to believe, is how despicable Han Solo was. A scoundrel many times over. Sure, he married a Princess turned General but royalty can’t always be earned. Ben had the grace and poise of Princess Leia with the charm and rakishness of Han Solo. He was massive. Tall and broad shouldered. His gaze laser focused even if you thought his attention elsewhere. He had this smile… ear to ear. No matter how hard you told yourself it was a trick, a con, you couldn’t help but fall into it. I stayed as far away from him as I could. 

When the officers would go on planet for leave he went sans uniform. He preferred the casualness of a tunic and vest and riding boots. Part of his game was to look as much as his father as he could. He’d walk into a bar, fill the doorway, and _float like a feather_ with his swagger. He ended up in too many brothels and too many bar fights. _He didn’t care if it hurt… he just wanted control_. He was never in danger though. The Knights were his comrades; encouraging him, guarding him, shielding him from everything.

I thought I had avoided him to the point he had forgotten me. He never bothered to remember anyone. He didn’t need to with countless people practically throwing themselves at him. _They wanted him to notice_ . On ship he was all business. On planet… _Whatever made him happy. Whatever he wanted._

_“You said to get the information. So that’s what I’ve been doing!” Finn protested. “She just keeps muttering the same thing over and over again. But I can’t get through.”_

He cornered me at the bar. That infamous gaze leveled on only me. He talked about how I was never out of his thoughts for long. Had never forgotten about the girl who could create life. I told him I wasn’t a notch on his bedpost. His frame seemed to take up my entire vision. Even leaning his hip against the bar, he had me enveloped. I remember wanting to push a curl behind his ear to see if they were as soft as they looked. He told me I could. The nerf herder was reading my thoughts. There were two shots next to us, I hadn’t realized he’d ordered them. I took one instead. 

I wish I could say that he confided in me the conflict he was experiencing. We didn’t say much, instead choosing to drink. Shots of moonshine speaking for us. I wondered if I could keep his full attention even after we tumbled into bed together. “ **I’m not here to fuck your father,** ” I proclaimed. 

“ **Neither am I,** ” he smirked.

“ **I’m not one of your port-girls either.** ”

“ **I never said you were.** ”

I fucked him. It was sloppy and passionate and lasted until just before morning. _I called him Kylo._

_“This is_ **_not_ ** _us, Finn. We do not lower ourselves to their level, do you understand?” Rey leveled her gaze against her friend. “I’ll take it from here. Hopefully she doesn’t know what’s happened.” Once Finn had left the room, Rey allowed that pull in her mind to take over. The whisper in her ear. The one she refused to speak of._

It wasn’t long after that he stopped going onto the planets for leisure. He wore his mask everywhere that wasn’t his private quarters. I rarely saw him and was thankful not to have the reminder of that night. Until I was reassigned. I was assigned as his personal secretary. I tried to refuse. No one could. Kylo Ren does not take meetings. It’s why the generals thought he would be easy to overthrow. They failed to recognize that if he wanted information he’d extract it from anyone at any time. My job was to watch him. He trained in the mornings, meditated before meals, and anything else stayed behind closed doors. He trained me how to block out anyone trying to enter my mind, with the exception of him. 

_An image formed in the prisoner’s mind. Brown eyes, curly hair, deep voice, with a soft smirk edging up his face. “‘Prisc… Hey, Prisc… Focus on me.”_

I was bombarded with thoughts and emotions and images from the serene to the horrific. I watched him morph from suave to wretched. I felt the flames Snoke stoked in him. The anger rising like a tide and crashing against rocks. All while staying silent. Stalwart. I had to. Others would have caved within an hour. I couldn’t cave.

Until you. 

I remember the day he met you. He wanted to get rid of you. Get your stench off of him. The scavenger girl who rebuffed his advances. After that, every short, thin, and brunette woman he saw he sought comfort in. The medical bay was filled with women having been force choked or bruised from his treatment. You would think with the bodies piling up something would have been done. Powerful men are allowed to take what they want. You could tell who he had because they wore a red ribbon around where he’d hurt them. Like a badge of honor. He was a notch on **their** bedpost.

After the death of Snoke he could no longer find refuge in his old habits. He didn’t want to. He was now Supreme Leader and I was still his secretary. I held the keys to the gate. If you wanted to get to him, you needed to go through me. Being in charge didn’t change his schedule at all. He still didn’t do meetings. But the following year was one of the most peaceful he’d had. Except for when he kept encountering you. The Force Dyad connection you shared. 

_Her eyes twitched, one cracking open, a weak breath expelling from the exhaustion. “...Kylo?” She licked her chapped lips, barely able to move her head, she couldn’t focus on the world around her just him. “I thought… you were dead…”_

_He looked around the room nonchalantly. “Yeah, well, not exactly.” She was familiar with that voice. Slight annoyance tinged his words. They were trying to find his way out._

You thought you brought him peace. Do you think every time he was pulled to the light was because of you? You just divided him further. He was supposed to have more resolve from his actions. You cut him to the bone. 

With his temper, everyone walked on eggshells. They had all seen the damage he had done to the ship he was on with either his lightsaber or his own fist. But not me. I couldn’t. I had to stay stalwart. I knew about the Sith and their apprentices. I offered myself up to him. I knew that he wanted you to be his. I thought I could take your place. I was wrong. He didn’t laugh or belittle. He looked at me steadily and said “ **I’m not going to place this curse upon you.** ” Does that sound like a Sith lord to you? 

_“I didn’t… I didn’t tell them anything… Just like you taught me,” she whispered. The exertion from trying to speak depleting her personal resources._

_“I know, and I am very proud of you. But, right now, you need to let them in. You have the information they’re looking for.” He reached out a hand and cupped her face. She thought he was cupping her face, she would swear she could feel his fingertips. But it was just a trick of the Force. Proven by her head lolling to her opposite shoulder when she tried to lean in to his palm._

_“I don’t know what they want…”_

_“They want me.” It was so matter of fact. His spirit rest in the mind of his dyad partner, waiting to get out, only able to interact when she would let him out. “‘Prisc… please...”_

Do you think this is about to be a fairy tale? Do you think I’m about to tell you that we fell in love? _I laughed breathlessly._ After Skywalker fell... He asked me to meditate with him. What felt like hours only lasted minutes. He was able to float and move things with his mind. He told me to focus on something. I focused on an open field of grain. Running through it, the stalks whispering against my legs and fingers, the sun on my face… I didn’t realize he had been watching. I couldn’t feel him in my mind. 

I looked at him. His face impassive as he stared out the window into open space, the darkness all encompassing. He wasn’t at peace. I took his hand and tried to see what he was looking at. All I could see were our reflections. I couldn’t think of anything to say, I was certain he saw my thoughts were blank. When I felt the silence become uncomfortable I made my exit. 

_The weight of that last word clenched her heart. The emotion of it all. She had been the one to rescue him in the TIE Fighter that took him to Exagol. She had the contingency plan._

_She had the map._

_Raising her head slightly so her eyes could meet Rey’s she blinked long at the woman. Rey had a kind face. But all “Prisc” was reminded of was the conflict Kylo had been put through. Her eyes searched for her former leader but he was gone. “A trick…”_

_“No trick. He’s here in spirit. But if you want him back, you need to give us the plans he gave you. It’s the only way to save him, he’s running out of time.”_

_A mischievous smirk crept up her face, the melody back in her voice. Once again falling prey to her own thoughts and memories. “I want a perfect soul…”_

The first night… He asked me to meditate again. I had been working on it, as to not embarrass myself. He asked me to think of that day in the sun again. 

_“I want you to notice when I’m not around…”_ He wasn’t talking about me. I was with him at almost all times of the day. There were countless times I had been woken up during the sleeping hours to tend to something that he needed. _“You’re so very special…”_

_“Yeah, I wish I was special…”_ I hadn’t meant to say it out loud. I hadn’t meant to even say it in my mind. It just came out. I was sitting next to a man I had seen completely transform from a cocky asshole looking for a quick night to The Supreme Leader of the strongest military in the galaxy. I tried to excuse myself, _“I don’t belong here…”_ but he was quick to keep me seated. His grip firm on my arm. He asked me not to run. 

He could search any mind and gather any intel that he wanted. He could hold a person in place or move them around the room. But, and this might be hard to believe, he would never put someone in such a compromising position for his own pleasure. I went freely. I wanted to be there. It wasn’t until I was in his lap, in his bed, the sheets around us that he said anything. _“She is running out again…”_

I thought he had seen you again. That you had seen us. I was maliciously happy that you might have. Maybe the Force would leave you alone and let the conflict within him die. That was not the case. “ **What?** ”

_“I said she’s running out…”_ I almost asked for more information, but his hips silenced me and his teeth against my skin kept me in a daze. I could feel more than hear his muttering. _“Runs, runs, runs, runs…”_

_“No, no, no, no, no! Don’t you do this.” Rey rushed to the woman’s side, patting her face, brushing her hair back, anything to keep the woman lucid. “Don’t you leave. We_ **_need_ ** _you._ **_He_ ** _needs you.”_

I later learned that you had been connected earlier. You had ignored him. You were training and he just watched. Did you like the attention? Did you like keeping him silent? Did you want to reach out and touch him like you had in that hut? Oh, you thought I didn’t know about that… There’s a lot you don’t know. 

If you think that this lead to a place where he wanted only me, you would be mistaken. There was no love just comfort. It only happened after you had been connected. The third time, he tried to apologize. I cut him off. _“Whatever makes you happy. Whatever you want. You’re so very special, I wish I was special…”_

_“But, I’m a creep. I’m a weirdo. What the hell am I doing here?! I don’t belong here!”_ I felt his fist hit the table as if it were my own. I had felt the conflict within him. Anyone who had spent any time with him could feel it. He wore his heart on his sleeve. 

“ **You are Kylo.** **You are your own man who doesn’t need to live up to the burden of a legend your parents barely knew. You forged your name and it will live in infamy.** ” My resolve shocked him. His stone faced expression broke at my conviction. I could see the thoughts and memories flooding him through his eyes. I might not have been able to see what they were but the anguish was visible to anyone who dared to look.

_It started as a sniff, then a hoarse giggle, that turned into a cough and then a choke. Rey grabbed a hydration sphere stuffing it into the prisoner’s mouth letting it dissolve on the tongue. “I would have been happy being your replacement… At least I would have known where I stood. Do you know what it feels like for someone to_ **_want_ ** _to want you? To know it’s all a lie? I would have been you if that was what he wanted… But he wanted to want me as myself…”_

_“Prisc, please…” Rey begged._

_“Not my name… You don’t get to call me by my not name…”_

_“I’m sorry. But Ben needs your help. He needs the information you gave him.” Her face was so close. Her eyes boring into my temple like she might be able to see into if she stared long enough._

_“Why can’t he give it to you?” The words held an attempt at being argumentative._

_“His mind… it’s fragmented. The state he’s in… he can’t recall much. It’s why it took so long to find_ **_you_ ** _. You’re the one he calls ‘life bringer’.”_

Do you want to know what he did between training and meditating? He studied. His quarters were filled with scrolls and books. Journals about his own experiences and experiments he had conducted. He studied _everything_. I asked to read them once but when he handed me a scroll it looked like absolute gibberish. He said it was because I wasn’t meant to understand it. He might have shirked his Jedi persona but he could still be a prick. 

_Ben hadn’t forgotten about her. That was surprising. She was a drunken one night stand on a desert moon. “Ben needs my help?” She laughed until she choked again. It didn’t take much. She could feel herself slipping. She wasn’t sure the mental block could hold much longer. It was becoming too much for her senses. It would be so easy to fall into a coma. Sleep for years after this torture. “Ben was a fuck… An arrogant prick using his father’s image to escape his own…”_

I was a shitty pilot but TIEs are pretty simple machines. Press a button and it goes. Use the stick and it moves. He was soaking wet and smelled of salt and fish. The first thing I noticed was his scar was gone. You would think I would have noticed the way he moved or his eyes. No. He stood, cramped behind my seat as I took him back to the destroyer. Getting off he didn’t put his helmet back on. It had been so long since he let any military personnel see him without it. 

The last time I would see him was in his quarters shirking most of his wet clothes. There was such determination on his face, everything about him said he was running out of time. He was zipping up his boots when, for the first time in a long time, I needed to find the courage to speak. “ **Kylo.** ” The hitch in his movements gave it away.

I choose to think that he didn’t want to ignore me. He was trying to find the right words. He pulled out a box, nondescript that could have held anything. Inside was a blaster. Kylo Ren had never used a blaster and never needed to. It was then that I realized he didn’t have his lightsaber on him. “ **Kylo!** ” My raised voice stopped him in his tracks. The blaster hung loosely from his fingers. I would never know that it was a present from his “Uncle Lando”. Tucking it into the back of his waistband he finally looked at me. 

“ **I’m sorry.** ” The tone was… wrong to me. It was authoritative but only after taking so much time to gather courage. His long legs were across the room and in front of me in a blink. His hands hovered over my shoulders moving down my arms unsure of where to put them. He wanted to press his forehead against mine but wrenched it away at the last moment. “ **I’m not the man you thought I was.** ”

“ **No!** ” The First Order had taken everything from me. They had taken me away from my family, they took my identity and made it into what they wanted, they made sure I had no life outside of the one they had laid out to me. Except for Kylo. “ **You are a man who doesn’t let the past dictate his future. You are not beholden to their ideals only your own!** ” 

He smiled sadly. “ **The man you know was made by the same people who made you.** ” His hands cupped my chin. Large and encompassing but they held me gently. “ **I’m leaving the past behind because it’s already gone. I’m asking for you to do the same.** ” Half plea, half command. “ **Because… I think I’m going to need you.** ” My fingers gripped his wrists, this sounded too much like a final goodbye. The entire Order was about to crumble beneath us. Everyone would be displaced or arrested. I was a high ranking officer simply by association. My life would be over. The life I escaped was the life I should have lived. “ **Will you let me in, one last time?** ” 

_That’s when she heard it. Kylo’s voice. It was deeper than Ben’s, more authoritative. The baritone graveled in its tenor._

He never asked for permission. It was my job to have my mind open to him and to hold his secrets. I nodded silently, feeling his pulse race under my fingertips. He rested his head against mine and I let a tidal wave of images and words flood my brain. I could feel the physical place where he was putting it. A pinprick at the back that lead to a dull ache that wouldn’t dissipate. He whispered something in my ear, something that I wasn’t supposed to fully understand before I felt his lips crushing against mine. There was no romance to it. He wasn’t a storybook prince going off to war. This was a key turning the lock. Then he was gone.

_An almost whisper. A phrase this Jedi could never have begun to figure out how to come across it. It was proof of his identity. Kylo may have reverted back to the light side, but to her Kylo was never fully on the dark side no matter how much he postured._

The effects took me a moment to recover from and by the time they did, I made my way to his window overlooking the bridge. I saw him running, his hair blowing thick and full from the salt, his blaster at his side just in case. But not one stormtrooper or officer questioned him. And like that… he was in the TIE fighter and gone.

_The relief began at the top of her head, and rushed down like a waterfall over her. It started as a trickle but picked up strength as she let it flow through her. The shackles around her wrists and waist barely registered. This was not to keep her imprisoned but to keep her from falling to the ground. The weight of everything being lifted off of her. Her defenses were tumbling down at an exponential rate. Before the darkness of sweet relief over took her she whispered, “You called him ‘Ben’... I called him ‘Kylo’.”_


End file.
